Presence-based communications applications are entering the mainstream telecommunications environment. In such applications, a user maintains one or more “contact lists” of other parties whose presence status is to be monitored and displayed to the user. If the other party is determined to be “present”, the user's contact list will display the available status. The user can then contact the other party for example via a telephone call.
The existing presence based real-time communication systems allow users to determine how and where to receive incoming calls. The users specify the rules based on the caller, time of day, etc. The users can also specify e-mail routing rules based on the subject of the e-mail, urgency of the e-mail etc. The use of subject and urgency for e-mails provides a mechanism for the sender's of the e-mails to indicate the importance of the message. Presently, presence based communication systems do not allow for a user under certain circumstances (like during a meeting they might be in) to be able to control their availability in a more selective way other than just through a presence indication.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a system that identifies the importance of calls and based upon that importance the call is routed to the appropriate destination.